Exact same problem with trying to upgrade from VCSA 6.5 to 6.7. When running the 'installer' on a remote Windows host, the installation just got stuck at 80% 'Copying RPM's....'. I stopped this installer after an hour with no progress, then tried connecting to the 'new' deployed vcenter appliance on tempIP:5480. It responded, and took me to a similar looking deployment screen, where I selected Upgrade again, and it just ran through the process until completion.

I still prefer the OVF deployment method myself. This new installer is very hit'n'miss.

Hi just to get my experience out there as it might help someone setting up a lab.

I run VMware workstation 14 with ESXi 6.5 installed as a Virtual Machine.

I then went to deploy a PSC to the ESXi vm within VMware workstation but it would get stuck at 80% ..

so I tried to create a blank vm and tried powering it on and no joy! as that's where it would get stuck at 80% trying to power on the vm. so cut long story short it was my ANTI-VIRUS AVG .. I had to totally remove/uninstall it from my Windows 10 OS before I could power on any vm's this sorted me out.

After 5-6 failed attempts, I realized that DNS should be reachable from VCSA while deployment. When it stuck at 80% I logged in to VCSA console and tried ping/nslookup etc which wasn't working. Made changed in networking which made DNS reachable and deployment completed successfully.

This issue comes from the fact that the installer is unable to start the RPM installation, and the VCSA installation log file gives you a hint:

debug: initiateFileTransferFromGuest error: ServerFaultCode: Failed to authenticate with the guest operating system using the supplied credentials.

So, the problem here is that VMWare produces these Installers with pre-set passwords in the VCSA ova image, however there is one issue that they probably did not plan very well; all passwords in a VCSA installation expires after 365 days... and there you have it... the password is probably expired.

So TLDR;

Download the latest VCSA image from the VMWare site and you will solve this issue. I believe most of you may be getting these images from "other" sources, and I strongly recommend you don't, but if you get a more current release (with all the nifty security updates) you will solve this issue.

Mine got stuck at 80%, after following the advice on here to login to the new appliance on port 5480, I realise the port group on the NIC was the default vm network. Once I changed this I was able to login and resume the installation.

Having same issue but this is when trying to restore . When using the installer for 5973321 it just hangs and times out. I can use any other version and get pass rpm installation. Those newer versions will not allow me to restore from the older 5973321 json file..... Any assistance or insight would be appreciated...

The machine from which i was launching the installer did not seem to get the dns resolved . So i opened a browser in Domain controller itself and downloaded the vcenterd ISO. Mounted it and ran the installer. This time since the DC was able to resolve vcenter records it went through smoothly. It was my lab tough, for prod environment ensure when you nslookup <vcentername> , it returns the appropriate record.

This is an old post, but thought I would still add my solution in case it helps someone. I downloaded the VCSA just today, so it's build is 6.7.0 U1b. I am migrating my windows vCenter 6.5 to a VCSA 6.7. DRS moved my new VCSA during the setup process, but thankfully it had finished setting up. However, my installer was stuck at 92%. I migrated the new VCSA back to the host it was supposed to be on, but it still didn't change my installer screen. I went to the vcenter console, and saw that my new VCSA was up and running. It showed the address to logon, so I logged into the temporary ip...https://tempip:5480 with root. It let me finish the migration from there even though my other machine with the migration info was still "stuck".